Transportation Working Group

Active Members in 2014
Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems
Tina Garrison

Industrial and systems engineering
Linkan Bian
Allen Greenwood
Mengqi Hu
Hugh Medal
John Usher

Proposed Additional Members
Li Zhang - civil and environmental engineering
Chuo Li - landscape architecture

Active Student Members in 2013
Civil and environmental engineering
Case William Fulcher
Mohsen Parsafard, Ph.D. student, CEE
Amir Ghiasi
Lei Zhang
Fang Zhou

Industrial and systems engineering
Heather Hart
Eghbal Rashidi
Matthew Winters

The goal of the Transportation Working Group (TWG) is to enhance MSU's research capacity and productivity in diverse areas related to transportation. We seek to do this by bringing in new ideas from renowned researchers and practitioners outside of MSU and promoting cross-disciplinary collaborations within the Bagley College of Engineering and across other colleges at MSU. The TWG consists of scholars, staff and students from a number of departments in several colleges including industrial and systems engineering, civil engineering, sociology, mechanical engineering and marketing. TWG will mainly focus on developing innovative research proposals at the nexus between the following topics:

• Modeling and optimization of complex transportation network/systems
• Modeling and optimization of logistics and supply chain networks
• Application of emerging technologies (e.g., advanced sensors, connected vehicles, driverless vehicles) in transportation operations and management
• Analysis of emerging "big data" topics in the fields of transportation and sociology

1. Seminars and Speakers. In 2012-2013 we hosted two outside speakers and two inside speakers. One of these speakers (Dr. Yao Wu from St. Louis University) collaborated with Dr. Mengqi Hu (ISE) on a proposal funded by NCITEC.
2. Funded Collaborative Proposals. In addition to Dr. Hu's funded proposal with Dr. Wu, Dr. Medal and Dr. Li also collaborated on a proposal funded by NCITEC.
3. Workshops. Ms. Linda Kay Clifton (director of educational programs at MDOT) gave a workshop titled “TRAC and RIDES Preparing Tomorrow Transportation Workforce.” Ms. Clifton also provided materials in support of a workshop that Drs. Eksioglu offered this summer. The workshop was titled “Mission Intermodal Excellence.” This was a 3-day long workshop that introduced K12 teachers to intermodal transportation.
4. Research Dissemination. The Deep South Regional Chapter of INFORMS hosted a one-day research workshop on Friday, April 12, 2013 on the UA campus in Tuscaloosa. The TWG sponsored the travel of a group from the ISE Department which included 3 professors (Hugh Medal, Burak Eksioglu and Sandra Eksioglu) and 7 ISE students (Apurba Nandi, Eghbal Rashidi, Alex Barrillas, William Bowen, Gokce Palak, Md. Roni and Mohammed Maruffuzzaman). Each student presented a poster at the conference, with 5 of 7 posters being transportation-related. Mohammad Marufuzzaman won 2^nd Place in the student poster competition with a poster titled "Minimizing the Carbon Footprint of Biofuel Supply Chains under Uncertainty." Ms. Cindy Smith, Assistant State Research Engineer at Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) participated in the workshop by making a presentation about data analysis challenges and needs faced by MDOT.

The MSU Transportation Working Group is a multi-disciplinary group of researchers from the Bagley College of Engineering and throughout Mississippi State University. We represent a diverse set of fields within transportation such as infrastructure design and planning, supply chain management, vehicle design, safety and fleet maintenance. Our main activities include research seminars and working lunches to facilitate the development of grant proposals.

If you are interested in transportation research, we invite you to be part of our group. Please contact Hugh Medal (hugh.medal@msstate.edu) or Xiaopeng Li (xli@cee.msstate.edu) for more information.